Winning the Semantics War

Posted by
Dr Snyder
on May 1st, 2017

May
1

One thing the American Left has been very good at is winning the semantics war. If you use words that sound appealing, you can mask their true meaning and fool a lot of people. A prime example is Planned Parenthood. That sounds so reasonable; after all, who would be in favor of chaotic parenthood?

The buzzword list keeps growing. It’s incumbent upon those who still use their brains to read between the lines.

Nowhere is this semantics war played out better than on college and university campuses. UC Berkeley students started the game back in the 1960s with the so-called Free Speech Movement. What a masterstroke. By saying they were the ones in favor of free speech, they intimated that the university was squelching speech. History shows that to be false. Neither did any of the “students” who used violence to get their way suffer any reprisals.

What’s really strange is that they get away now with using the same semantics while simultaneously stomping on the free speech of those with whom they disagree.

Few want to say it, but there’s an eerie kind of parallel that can be made historically:

America has always allowed the greatest freedom of speech of any nation. If you are on the Left, you can get away with saying almost anything you want, regardless of the outrageousness of your statement. If you are on the Right . . . well, not so much, it seems.

While we’re on the subject of free speech, let me go in a little different direction with that term.

Following in the giant footsteps of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama is now earning unbelievable speaking fees. How does anyone defend giving a person, no matter how famous, $400,000 for talking less than an hour?

Shame on Obama for taking the money. Shame on Wall Street for offering it.

I talk many hours every year teaching classes. It’s going to take me a while to get to that figure. And if I go to some organization to speak, most of the time I receive no compensation. You see, I really believe in free speech because most of mine is free to whoever wants to hear it.

The Barack Obama theme: socialism for thee, but not for me.

It’s hard for the Left to keep raging against the establishment when the Left is the establishment. They got there largely by winning the semantics war.